One of the strange ironies of our times: a significant segment of the left pushes back forcefully against the idea of “color blindness” regarding race but demands what amounts to “gender blindness” regarding sex. We’re supposed to assume racial distinctions are inevitable and enduring in most, if not all, interactions in society, while in debates over marriage, relationships, sports, bathrooms, or medicine, justice demands we ignore or minimize the real and meaningful differences between men and women.
Put another way, those most prone to a rigid understanding of race opt for a fluid understanding of sex.
Biologically, this is backward. There’s only one race: the human race. Our understanding of race (in contrast to “ethnicity”) is a societal classification. It’s not grounded in biology or anthropology, even if we acknowledge the enduring effects of historical and social ramifications because of unjust divisions. But sex (including our understanding of gender) is rooted in meaningful bodily difference. To harp on racial identity as all-encompassing and then claim one’s sex or gender to be “choosable” is a masterclass in convoluted thinking.
The Irish aren’t having it.
The Irish Want Moms
Earlier this year, on International Women’s Day no less, Irish voters in a landslide retained statements in their constitution that highlight the dignity of a woman’s “life within the home” that “gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.” A “Care Amendment” had been proposed, a recommendation that would have removed gendered language altogether, opting instead for a generic nod at “the provision of care, by members of a family to one another.” The vote was 74 percent against, the highest “No” vote in the history of Irish constitutional referendums.
Voters also kept constitutional language that describes marriage as “the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and the State” and rejected an updated, expanded governmental definition of families founded on “other durable relationships.” Even if the Irish unwittingly greased the path for such proposals by green-lighting same-sex marriage a few years ago, they’ve drawn a line here at further tinkering with the family.
Inclusivity as Gender-Blindness?
It’s common today for the buzzword of “inclusivity,” when applied to sexuality, to mean “gender blindness.” While the church has, at times, exaggerated gender distinctions in a way that minimizes our equal worth as image-bearers of God, the culture right now diminishes our image-bearing identity by reframing “equality” as flattening distinctions between men and women, as if mothers and fathers, or men and women, are interchangeable in all aspects that really matter to society.
Those who cheered on the amendments to the Irish Constitution saw the statements about women at home as backward and repressive. But there’s nothing in the constitution that requires mothers to stay at home. The language merely carves out a space for women to resist the pressure to be cogs in an economic machine and acknowledges the governmental debt owed to women who opt for caring for and nurturing their children at home. It honors women whose contributions bring societal benefits that cannot be captured on a spreadsheet.
John Duggan points to journalist Sara Carey, who sought to explain to people inside the media and political bubble why three-quarters of women rejected the proposal to scrub “mothers” from the constitution. “We’re not members of the far right,” she said. “We’re not confused. We’re not misinformed. And if every single Cabinet Minister had walked up to my door, I wasn’t going to vote for it, because I was not deleting mothers from the Constitution.”
Women from all ends of the spectrum—even professional women—hated the proposed changes, with three-quarters lamenting the fact that women who work in the home are less valued by society. One woman told Carey, “If [the line about women in the home] wasn’t in the constitution, I’d be fighting to put it in.”
Celebration of God’s Good Design
Once again, we live in odd times. Many of the same people who argue for discrimination based on race argue against any meaningful difference between men and women, even though sex is biologically determined in a way racial classifications aren’t.
As followers of Jesus, we’re to reject favoritism and prejudice, in part because we belong to the multiethnic family of God—a chosen nation that encompasses more peoples than any other religion in history. We aren’t to be color blind, if by that phrase we intend to ignore ethnicity or minimize our history of racial injustice. We celebrate and give thanks to God for creating us in his image, in all our magnificent variety, and that’s why we stand against unfair treatment and racial injustice.
At the same time, we uphold and celebrate the glorious difference-in-unity that marks men and women—equal before God in worth and dignity, with real and meaningful distinctions based in creation. No matter how often some repeat the phrase “love is love” or adopt slogans of “marriage equality” or try to persuade us “all love is the same,” we can point to the human body and say the truth in love: Nature discriminates. Every person on earth traces his or her existence back to the unity-in-distinction of the sexes. Men and women aren’t interchangeable.
Even if there’s overlap in the qualities and characteristics of “parenting,” we believe fathers contribute something mothers cannot and mothers contribute something fathers cannot. We must resist the erasure of this fundamental biological reality and the Orwellian turn that would have us transform fathers and mothers into sexless “parents” and “guardians” and “caregivers,” or reframe the family as merely “durable relationships.”
I don’t know what the future holds for Ireland. But in this case, kudos to the Irish for refusing to be gender blind.
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